Evidence?

While the television may have been the vehicle for encouraging the downfall of Senator McCarthy, I don’t agree that the downfall was the result of a more accepting, open-minded American audience. What I mean is that I don’t think Americans ousted McCarthy for his overt criticism of communism, but instead for the obvious injustices to the American constitution and ideologies in McCarthy's televised hearings. In that regard, Murrow’s unmasking of McCarthy’s political antics was not rooted in accepting difference, but illuminating the injustices of McCarthy’s tyrannical attacks. Therefore, if television did promote a more accepting society, it was a by-product of other intentions, rather than one of television's intentional functions. However, in light of my assenting assignment, I will attempt to illuminate some of Doherty’s observations that I think serve as evidence for his main argument. Although I don’t think he states this directly or even particularly clearly, (thus suggesting that my comments largely depend on my own analysis of his discussion), I do think that chapters seven and eight provide evidence, although questionable, for Doherty’s overarching argument that 1950s television sparked “the expansion of freedom of expression and the embrace of human difference,” and thus, “through television, America became a more open and tolerant place” (2).

First, I must say that I was intrigued by Doherty’s discussion of the multifarious identity of the 1950’s male, and couldn’t help drawing parallels to our current society and political wartime situation. The same task of being American among a variety of other adjectives relates to our current situation wherein I myself face the dilemma of being a female American whose liberal Democratic views were concretized during the Bush Administration (a time in which expected and propagandized patriotism soared), am an Iraq war protestor, an Amnesty International advocator, a corporate bail-out critic, and an individual who absolutely loves this country. How can one person be all of these things; how can one person be all of these things and be “American”? I think Doherty does a fine job of illuminating the individual complexities via psychoanalysis within the larger narratives of patriotism, nationalism, and American-ism, thus, for me, questioning the very nature of such –isms, as I think Doherty attempts to critique. Inherent in determining “Un-American” activities is the need to define “American” ones, and I think its fair to say that this may have caused concern for many postwar citizens, in that not many could fit the rigid expectations of the ideal American, and therefore lead the masses to question the such categorizations. An American can be many things that would obviously differ from neighbor to neighbor. Sympathetic to Philbrick’s situation in I Led 3 Lives, Doherty reminds us that “for the postwar American male, controlled schizophrenia was not a mental state reserved for spies and double agents…[for the American male] the multiplicity of roles played at the same time by the same man had never been so numerous and varied…Philbrick’s plight bespeaks an entire generation juggling shifting identities and mercurial relationships…In watching Philbrick watch himself, perhaps Americans identified less with his political agenda than his psychic agility…at a time when so many were leading three lives or more” (148). I think Doherty’s point here, then, is that audience members viewing various persecutions based on “Un-American-ism” allowed the break down of the condemning gaze with which many Americans viewed difference.

Doherty also highlights how media, for biased political and nationalist reasons, favored the representation of one side of the debate, thus unfairly silencing and condemning the opinion with which the government disagreed. Such practices illuminated the civil rights violation of freedom of speech and, as Doherty asserts, the only way to address such issues would be to “find a court dedicated to the rare principle of equal justice for all” (143, emphasis added). I can see how the recognition of this unjustness would elicit sympathy from American viewers not for the Communists, but for the accused’s situation in the judicial system and society, which possibly, then, may have transcribed into some, even if minimal or unintentional, sympathy for Communist individuals in America (?). Additionally, while I Led 3 Lives “critique[d] anticommunist paranoia” speaking “to the plight of the duped liberal smeared by his past associations” suggests a desire for past associations to be forgiven—to move forward, looking ahead rather than back, with a clean slate. Likewise, Doherty uses the See It Now report on Senator McCarthy as a means to suggest a shift toward greater freedom of expression in the media: “when television, the medium so leery of controversial personalities, so devoted to ‘100% acceptability,’ provided a forum for anti-McCarthyism, the gesture marked a seismic shift in the zeitgeist” (162). This television moment, central to Doherty’s argument regarding the expansive possibility for freedom of expression, opened doors for disagreement, contrasting yet equally credible opinions, and controversy on national television—Controversy is “as American as the Rocky Mountains and the Fourth of July” (171); controversy, rather than conformity, is American.

Finally, I think Doherty’s discussion of the Annie Lee Moss case is vital to his argument; Moss “played her part” according to the stereotypes promulgated through popular shows like Amos and Andy and duped the system which believed in and supported such stereotypes. Playing the uneducated Negress, “she stalled over ‘adjudication,’” and “the gallery chuckled, in sympathy, in condescension, at the limited education of the poor black woman” (182). Doherty asserts, however, that Moss “savored the last laugh” (184). Annie, who, as later revealed by the FBI, was indeed a Communist, essentially forced white American viewers to think critically about the Negro stereotypes infiltrating the airwaves of radio and television, and be more open and willing to the possibility of equality among Blacks and Whites in America.

Through these few instances in 1950s television, Doherty attempts to highlight how television was not only used for political propaganda, fueling anxiety about the war and communism, and instilling fear in the American people; he argues that there were, in fact, also instances where television programs reinforced the freedoms that McCarthyism threatened, thus opening doorways for more accepting, open, and tolerant views.